All the Rage by Courtney Summers Review

All the Rage by Courtney Summers 

 

“Just because something starts out sweet doesn’t mean it won’t push itself so far past anything you can call sweet anymore.”

All the Rage is the story of Romy who is suffering from the aftermath of her rape whilst also dealing with the bullying/hatred of the town people and trying to bury the old her. 

 “No. But no is a dead word.”

The story starts off with the rape scene and introduces the situation surrounding it. The rapist is the sheriff’s son and part of a family which is highly respected and influential in the small town where Romy lives.  Romy suffers backbiting and mental & physical abuse from parents, teachers and students and it made me so angry. I come from a fairly large city so I don’t know a substitute for the Turner family but I can’t believe how cowardly and stupid everyone was to blindly follow what the family said or to know they were wrong and be too fearful to say anything. Later on in the novel more details of the rape scene are given.  

“Makeup was a shallow girl’s sport, but it’s not. It’s armour.”

Romy is sort of living 2 different lives – the “old” her was the one who got hurt and she’s trying to move on from that girl. I don’t even know how she had the will to go to school – if I was facing the abuse she was I wouldn’t and her silent strength was important to her because it sheltered her from too much negativity.

“You know all the ways you can kill a girl? God, there are so many.”

Rape culture is such a big theme in the book and it’s dealt with really well. In the book Romy is called a “Slit” because to them she’s worse than a slut who is still a human being but she’s just slit for them to fuck with. It’s so horrible to not only go through what Romy has gone through but then be dehumanised because of it – literally everybody’s abuse was mostly because no one saw her a person just someone to toy with. I was so angry at the town’s people for their victim blaming because they thought she was drunk, she fancied him, she wore tight clothes and her background and that meant she wasn’t raped she just did it for attention. I hope no one ever goes through that situation alone.

“They cry for her and twist their hands in a way they never would for me. This is what happens when a girl befalls a fate no one thinks she deserves.”

 In the book Romy’s ex best friend has gone missing and everybody grieves for her because not only was she popular she didn’t deserve to be kidnapped – who does? But Romy didn’t have any of this when she was raped because wasn’t on the same “level” as Kellan and because people believed she deserved it. Also there’s this party that happens and the actions at that party show how much people believe she deserved to be raped because they let people do these things to her.

“I don’t know why it’s the girls who always seem to have to take on that kind of burden.”

Even after everything people still worry about his promising career... just stop! No one cares - you do the crime you pay for it.  

★★★★☆